Review of Whisper of the Heart

Ok, first of all, take my rating of this anime with a grain of salt. It's my all-time FAVOURITE Hayao Miyazaki film, so I'm biased (towards Miyazaki and towards this particular film among his films), to say the least. I don't really think that anything I could say would really be very different from other reviews out there. I've read a bunch of them, plenty saying how well this film captures raw emotion, it's one of the Miyazaki films that is left unnoticed after Spirited Away and the like, etc, etc. All very true, so 'nuff said. What I CAN say, which really goes without saying foranyone who has ever watched Japanese anime, is that the English translations (not always, but certainly in this case) completely BUTCHERED the movie! It trivialized the portrayl of adolescent emotions. This movie gives insight to how profound emotions (sorry if I"m being repetitive with "emotions" but I'm at a loss for an equally all-emcompassing word) can make an impact on young people. Just because they are young does not mean that they feel any less intensely or that their feelings (ah! a synonym! why didn't I think of that earlier....) are less true for them.

But the English translations RUIN this! Miyazaki has a knack for drawing out a realness in his films, even in the more fantastical ones. The emotions (there's that word again) are so raw that a receptive audience can sympathize with the characters quite easily. This movie especially is touching because it's sweet, but it's not all flowers and honey. Not everything goes over smoothly (this is my agreement to another preview I read somewhere on the interweb. I don't mean to copy :P).

Now, if you already know this about translated ANYTHING and completely ignored the English version, GOOD ON YOU. It sucked. I find very few are true to the original story. No matter how close in meaning it can be, there's always something lost in translation (cliche, I know). Basically, DO NOT WATCH THE ENGLISH VERSION. I only watched it out of curiosity. I've watched this movie (in Japanese, of course) countless times (it's my go-to movie when I feel like watching something Japanese-y and moving yet not too far fetched, which the Japanese have a flair for as well). I only wanted to make a comparison, but really THERE IS NO comparison.

Japanese > English ANY DAY.

edit: one more thing. The soundtrack for the English movie is also inferior to the original Japanese one (duh!). The music sounds dinkier which adds to the overall effect of "corny"ness (if you're unfortunate enough to have watched the English version, you will get what I mean by "corny") in the English version. I understand that they had to reduce background sounds to put in the voice overs, but they removed too much and put in too many unnecessary extra sounds. BLEH >:P

edit (again): another synonym: raw/DELICATE handling of emotions/feelings.